Review: LG Lotus

The Lotus's music player is no great shakes. It is on par with what you expect from any mid-range feature phone that is not focused on providing a killer music experience.

You can launch the player with the phone closed by unlocking the phone and pressing the camera key. With the phone unlocked, you press the button below the external display to start playing the current playlist. There are two stereo speakers on the outside of the phone that can get quite loud during music playback (why the ringers can't reach the same volume levels, I have no idea). The sound is clear and clean, with no distortion even at full volume. You can play/pause and skip forward and back tracks from the external screen.

With the phone open, you have a few more choices. The music player has been updated a bit to reflect Sprint's new user interface, but it does not look like it was a major overhaul. Using the Sprint Music Store to discover and download music is reasonably easy. Browsing takes longer than performing searches for what you may want to buy. Purchasing and downloading takes about one minute per song.

The music player itself displays album art and a progress bar. The D-pad lets you play/pause or rewind/fast-forward. The options menu really only lets you navigate around your playlists or the music store. There are no equalizer presets at all. Pressing the D-pad up or down lets you cycle through the songs in your playlist quickly.

Music can be side-loaded through the phone's USB port, or placed directly onto a microSD card.

In the end, the music player is hamstrung by the Lotus's lack of a 3.5mm headset jack for regular stereo headphones, but it gets the job done.